If the UT study is right, there's a good chance either Chuck or Larry will die by his own hand.

In its infinite wisdom, the University of Texas-Austin is backing a professor whose study, co-funded by one of the kookiest anti-gay-marriage groups out there, suggests a higher incidence of suicidal thoughts and unemployment among children of same-sex households.

After blogger Scott Rose complained to the university about what he believed to be flaws in Professor Mark Regnerus's last July, UT officials conducted an inquiry. And this week those officials released a statement, finding that "The University of Texas at Austin has determined that no formal investigation is warranted into the allegations of scientific misconduct lodged against [Regnerus]...."

As surprising as that finding was, Hair Balls was more perplexed by the seeming lack of embarrassment among UT higher-ups that one of their profs took money from two fundamentalist groups whose involvement sorta screams "conflict of interest."

The groups in question are the New Jersey-based Witherspoon Institute and Wisconsin-based Bradley Foundation. The former sports a senior fellow, Robert George, who's a Princeton professor and a chairman emeritus of the National Organization for Marriage.

Regnerus's findings are (surprise!) totally in keeping with these groups' archaic, anti-gay rhetoric, which is complete with weird conspiracy theories and notion that allowing two dudes to say "I do" will hasten the collapse of civilization that no-fault divorce somehow started. Here, then, are some things we've learned from perusing Witherspoon's and NOM's, websites, newsletters, and other publications.

Gay dudes will descend like velociraptors upon a young maiden's eggs
"Young women now have to defend themselves not only from stereotypical sexual predators, but also from older women and gay men who see their eggs."

Snooty university types will unjustly label you a bigot just because you think choosing a gay lifestyle chock full of gay-on-gay sex is immoral
"The worst of all university dogmas to reject is the goodness and worth of the homosexual lifestyle....You think a homosexual orientation is intrinsically disordered and homosexual acts are objectively immoral? Can you say 'homophobia'? And good luck if you're someone who experiences same-sex attractions but doesn't desire to be gay. You will be labeled as self-loathing."

Gay marriage is just as bad as abortion; and abortion is bad because any kid who was never aborted is keenly aware of the fact that the only reason he is alive because, as a zygote, he won an Anton Chigurh-like coin-flip.
"And the children who know that they were just fortunate not to have parents who destroyed their own children (or worse, that they just happened to be the children their parents did not destroy) live every day with the knowledge that their existence depends on the whim of those in power."

First rule of Anti-Gay Fight Club: There is no such thing as the law of non-contradiction.
"Gays and lesbians have a right to live as they choose; they don't have the right to define marriage for all of us."

Being gay should be its own reward; like playing chess, or maybe Hungry, Hungry Gay Hippos.
"Contemporary American society loads massive amounts of attention and honor on sports at all levels, and hardly any at all on chess. This huge disparity in recognition, however, makes no difference at all to the true chess lover.....if the supposed lover of chess were to demand indignantly that his activity deserves recognition on a par with other games, we would rightly suspect that there is, in fact, some deficiency in the intrinsic satisfactions of chess that he seeks to make up through the more superficial satisfactions of recognition or public honor."

Not all anti-gay-marriage advocates are bigoted, they just think letting gays get married will utterly destroy the sanctity of the American family as we know it.
"Many gays want the same government recognition for their unions that heterosexual couples can receive. One could balk at extending such recognition -- without wanting in any way to interfere with gay relationships or harboring any ill-feelings toward gays -- simply on the grounds that heterosexual unions, being the source of almost all procreation and the site of almost all child-rearing, are to be encouraged and stabilized."

We just look forward to Regnerus's upcoming R.J. Reynolds-funded study on how much happier and wealthier smokers are!